U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left) meets with Muhammadu Buhari, President of Nigeria. UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 26 2015 (IPS)

With over 1.5 million displaced, 800,000 of whom are children, and continuously escalating violence in northeastern Nigeria, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the humanitarian situation as “particularly worrying” during a visit to the country.

Speaking at a press conference on Aug. 24 following a meeting with newly-elected Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, Ban expressed concern over the “troubling” violence perpetrated by armed extremist group Boko Haram and its impact on civilians.

In an impact assessment report released in April 2015 on the conflict in Nigeria, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) found that in 2014 alone, more than 7,300 people have been killed at the hands of Boko Haram.

As a result of the conflict, access to health services, safe water, and sanitation is extremely limited in northeastern Nigeria. UNICEF found that less than 40 percent of health facilities are operational in the conflict-stricken region, increasing the risk of malaria, measles, and diarrhoea.

Malnutrition rates have soared in northern Nigeria, accounting for approximately 36 percent of malnourished children under five across the entire Sahel region.

UNICEF also reported that women and children are deliberately targeted and abducted in mass numbers for physical and sexual assault, slavery, and forced marriages.

Ban reiterated these findings during a dialogue on democracy, human rights, development, climate change, and countering violent extremism in Abuja on Aug. 24, marking the 500^th day of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping.

“I am appealing as U.N. Secretary-General and personally as a father and grandfather. Think about your own daughters. How would you feel if your daughters and sisters were abducted by others?” said Ban while calling for the girls’ unconditional release.

Though the Chibok kidnapping was by far Boko Haram’s largest abduction, Human Rights Watch reported in its 2015 World Report on Nigeria that the extremist group has abducted more than 500 women and girls since 2009.

Amnesty International has also reported brutal “acts which constitute crimes under international law” committed by Nigerian government forces, including the abuse, torture, and extrajudicial killings of detainees. In one case, the national armed forces rounded up a group of 35 men “seemingly at random” and beat them publicly. The men were detained and returned to the community six days later, where military personnel “shot them dead, several at a time, before dumping their bodies.”

Corruption has also been a serious problem within the police force and the government. The International Crisis Group stated that the country has lost more than 400 billion dollars to large-scale corruption since independence in 1960.

“The most effective way to root out this disease is a transparent, fair, and independent process to address corruption in a comprehensive way,” said Ban in his keynote address to the dialogue.

The U.N. chief also stressed on the importance of collaboration in addressing such violent crimes and in alleviating the humanitarian situation, announcing increased humanitarian operations and the provision of training for military operations.

But he dismissed the sole use of military force, stating: “Weapons may kill terrorists. But good governance will kill terrorism.”

Since Boko Haram’s radicalization in 2009, at least 15,000 people have been killed.

The group is opposed to secular authority and seeks to implement Sharia law in northern Nigeria, where widespread poverty and marginalization may also have been contributing factors to the extremists’ rise.

According to Nigeria’s Millennium Development Goals Report, the north has the highest absolute poverty rate in the country, with approximately 66 percent of people living on less than a dollar a day, compared to 55 percent in the south.

In fact, in an April New York Times op-ed, Buhari stated that countering Boko Haram will not only require increased military operations, but also increased attention to social issues such as poverty and education.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Children playing in Karañakaek, Venezuela. Credit: Fidel Márquez/IPS

By Jaya Ramachandran
BRUSSELS, Aug 5 2015 (IPS)

A Brussels-based think-tank has warned Venezuela of an impending humanitarian calamity in tandem with growing political instability.

While the accelerating deterioration of the South American country’s political crisis is cause for growing concern, says the International Crisis Group, there is a less widely appreciated side of the dramatic situation: “A sharp fall in real incomes, major shortages of essential foods, medicines and other basic goods and breakdown of the health service are elements of a looming social crisis.”

In a recent briefing, the Crisis Group says: “If not tackled decisively and soon, it will become a humanitarian disaster with a seismic impact on domestic politics and society, and on Venezuela’s neighbours. This situation results from poor policy choices, incompetence and corruption.”

The Group points to another aspect of the impending humanitarian crisis: “Those with ailments such as cancer, HIV-AIDS or cardiovascular disease can go months without medicines they require to survive. Hospitals and even private clinics cannot maintain stocks of medicines and other basic supplies, including spare parts to repair equipment.”

The think-tank headed by Jean-Marie Guéhenno, a former French diplomat, refers to “some economists” who predict a sudden collapse in food consumption and widespread hunger. It adds: “Public health specialists already say that some surveys are showing chronic malnutrition, although the country is not yet on the verge of famine.

The collapse of the health service, however, can have pernicious short-term effects, including uncontrolled spread of communicable diseases and thousands of preventable deaths, warns the Crisis Group.

However, it adds, the severest consequences can be avoided by ending the political deadlock since 2014 between the government and opposition, which in turn would require “strong engagement of foreign governments and multilateral bodies”.

Venezuela is the 12th largest oil producer in the world, with the largest reserves, and a beneficiary of the most sustained oil price boom in history. In view of this, argues the Crisis Group, it should be well placed to ride out the recent collapse of the international price of crude.

It points out that the oil boom, combined in the early years at least with the government’s redistribution policies, brought about a significant decrease in poverty under the administration of the late Hugo Chávez, during 1999-2013.

But well before the 50 per cent fall in prices at the end of 2014, a year in which Gross Domestic Product (GDP) shrank by more than 4 per cent and inflation rose to 62 per cent, the economy was showing signs of strain, says the Crisis Group.

It adds: “Expropriations of private land and businesses, stringent price and exchange controls and inefficient, often corruptly-run state enterprises undermined the nation’s production of basic goods and services.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Sep. 9, 2009. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Apr 3 2015 (IPS)

Two days after the deadline for reaching a deal over Iran’s nuclear programme had passed, negotiators looked like they would be going home empty handed. But a surprisingly detailed framework was announced Apr. 2 in Lausanne, Switzerland, as well as in Washington, and in the same breath, U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged the battle he faces on Capitol Hill.

“The issues at stake here are bigger than politics,” said Obama on the White House lawn after announcing the “historic understanding with Iran,” which, “if fully implemented will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

“If Congress kills this deal [...] then it’s the United States that will be blamed for the failure of diplomacy." -- U.S. President Barack Obama
“If Congress kills this deal – not based on expert analysis, and without offering any reasonable alternative – then it’s the United States that will be blamed for the failure of diplomacy,” he said. “International unity will collapse, and the path to conflict will widen.”

Negotiators from Iran and the P5+1 countries (U.S., U.K., France, China, Russia plus Germany) have until Jun. 30 to produce a comprehensive final accord on Iran’s controversial nuclear programme. That gives Congress just under three months to embrace a “constructive oversight role”, as the president said he hoped it would.

“Congress has played a couple of roles in these negotiations,” Laicie Heeley, policy director at the Washington-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told IPS. “I think some folks would like to think they are playing a bad cop role, but I’m not sure how effective they’ve been…it’s a dangerous game to play.”

If negotiators had gone home empty handed, hawkish measures, like the Kirk-Menendez sponsored Iran Nuclear Weapon Free Act of 2013, which proposes additional sanctions and the dismantling of all of Iran’s enrichment capabilities – a non-starter for the Iranians – would have had a better chance of acquiring enough votes for a veto-proof majority.

Officials at the Iran talks in Lausanne, Switzerland. Credit: European External Action Service/CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0

But now that a final deal is on the horizon, Republicans will have a much harder time convincing enough Democrats to sign on to potentially deal-damaging bills.

The Corker bill gives the final say to a Republican-majority Congress – which has consistently criticised the president’s handling of the negotiations – granting it 60 days to vote on any comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran immediately after it’s reached. During that period, the president would not be able to lift or suspend any Iran sanctions.

Corker said Thursday that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would take up the bill on Apr. 14, when lawmakers return from a spring recess.

“If a final agreement is reached, the American people, through their elected representatives, must have the opportunity to weigh in to ensure the deal truly can eliminate the threat of Iran’s nuclear program and hold the regime accountable,” he said in a statement.

But administration officials reminded reporters yesterday that the president would oppose any bill that it considered harmful to the prospects of a final deal.

“The president has made clear he would veto new sanctions legislation during the negotiation, and he made clear he would veto the existing Corker legislation during negotiations,” said a senior administration official yesterday during a press call.

“What would not be constructive is legislative action that essentially undercuts our ability to get the deal done,” said the official.

The idea that Congress should have a say on any deal became especially popular after a preliminary accord was reached in Geneva two years ago, clearing the path for a host of congressional measures particularly from the right. But now that a final deal is in the works, hawks will have a harder time acquiring essential support from Democrats.

“Before yesterday Senator Corker was fairly certain he could get a veto-proof majority, but now that there’s a good deal on the table he’s going to have a lot of trouble getting votes from enough Democrats,” said Heeley, who closely monitors Capitol Hill.

Statements from key democrats yesterday retained what has become customary skepticism, but some are already hinting that they are gearing up to support the administration’s position.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called on his colleagues to “take a deep breath, examine the details and give this critically important process time to play out.”

“We must always remain vigilant about preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon but there is no question that a diplomatic solution is vastly preferable to the alternatives,” he said in a statement Thursday.

Obama has his work cut out for him, however, in the next two weeks as pro- and anti-deal groups press Congress to take up their positions.

“[W]e have concerns that the new framework announced today by the P5+1 could result in a final agreement that will leave Iran as a threshold nuclear state,” said the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a leading Israel lobby group, in a statement.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a well-known hawkish think tank in D.C, also reiterated its stance against any deal that allows Iran to maintain its nuclear infrastructure.

“The parameters of the nuclear deal that have emerged look like we are headed toward a seriously flawed one,” wrote FDD’s Mark Dubowitz and Annie Fixler in an article on the Quartz website entitled ‘Obama’s Nuclear Deal With Iran Puts the World’s Safety at Risk’.

The Israeli prime minister, who received numerous standing ovations when he addressed Congress on Iran in March – even after the White House made its opposition to his visit crystal clear – meanwhile called the framework deal “a grave danger” that would “threaten the very survival” of Israel.

Both Israel, and to a lesser degree Saudi Arabia, have made their opposition to the negotiations with Iran clear, and are expected to voice their concerns loudly over the next few months.

But the Obama administration’s efforts can’t be solely devoted to convincing allies or fighting a home front battle—it must also nail down the details of the final deal, which is far from guaranteed at this point.

“A lot of thorny issues will have to be resolved in the next three months, chief among them the exact roadmap for lifting the sanctions, language that goes into the U.N. Security Council resolution, measures for resolving the PMD [possible military dimensions] issues, and the mechanism for determining violations,” Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s senior Iran analyst, told IPS.

“Negotiations will not get easier in the next three months; in fact, they will get harder as the parties struggle to resolve the remaining thorny issues and defend the agreement,” said Vaez, who was in Lausanne when the agreement was announced.

“Success is not guaranteed, but this breakthrough has further increased the cost of breakdown,” he added.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Yemeni protesters in Sanaa carrying pictures of arrested men. Credit: Yazeed Kamaldien/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 28 2015 (IPS)

When North and South Yemen merged into a single country under the banner Yemen Arab Republic back in May 1990, a British newspaper remarked with a tinge of sarcasm: “Two poor countries have now become one poor country.”

Since its birth, Yemen has continued to be categorised by the United Nations as one of the world’s 48 least developed countries (LDCs), the poorest of the poor, depending heavily on foreign aid and battling for economic survival."This double game was well known to the Americans. They went along with it. It is what allowed AQAP to take Jar and other regions of Yemen and hold them with some ease." -- Vijay Prashad

But the current political chaos – with the president, prime minister and the cabinet forced to resign en masse last week – has threatened to turn the country into a failed state.

And, more significantly, Yemen is also in danger of being split into two once again – and possibly heading towards another civil war.

Charles Schmitz, an analyst with the Middle East Institute, was quoted last week as saying: “We’re looking at the de facto partitioning of the country, and we’re heading into a long negotiating process, but we could also be heading toward war.”

In a report released Tuesday, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said the fall of the government has upended the troubled transition and “raises the very real prospect of territorial fragmentation, economic meltdown and widespread violence if a compromise is not reached soon.”

The ousted government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi was a close U.S. ally, who cooperated with the United States in drone strikes against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) holed up in the remote regions of Yemen.

The United States was so confident of its ally that the resignation of the government “took American officials by surprise,” according to the New York Times.

Matthew Hoh, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy (CIP), told IPS, “I don’t know if Yemen will split in two or not. [But] I believe the greater fear is that Yemen descends into mass chaos with violence among many factions as we are seeing in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, all nations that have been the recipient of interventionist U.S. foreign policy.”

According to an Arab diplomat, the Houthis who have taken power are an integral part of the Shiite Muslim sect, the Zaydis, and are apparently financed by Iran.

But the country is dominated by a Sunni majority which is supported by neighbouring Saudi Arabia, he said, which could trigger a sectarian conflict – as in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

Ironically, all of them, including the United States, have a common enemy in AQAP, which claimed responsibility for the recent massacre in the offices of a satirical news magazine in Paris.

“In short, it’s a monumental political mess,” said the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Vijay Prashad, George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, told IPS it is very hard to gauge what will happen in Yemen at this time.

“The battle lines are far from clear,” he said.

The so-called pro-U.S, government has, since 2004, played a very dainty game with the United States in terms of counter-terrorism.

On the one side, he said, the government of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and then Hadi, suggested to the U.S. they were anti al-Qaeda.

But, on the other hand, they used the fact of al-Qaeda to go after their adversaries, including the Zaydis (Houthis).

“This double game was well known to the Americans. They went along with it. It is what allowed AQAP to take Jar and other regions of Yemen and hold them with some ease,” Prashad said.

He dismissed as “ridiculous” the allegation the Zaydis are “proxies of Iran”. He said they are a tribal confederacy that has faced the edge of the Saleh-Hadi sword.

“They are decidedly against al-Qaeda, and would not necessarily make it easier for AQAP to exist,” said Prashad, a former Edward Said Chair at the American University of Beirut and author of ‘Arab Spring, Libyan Winter.’

Hoh told IPS: “Based upon the results from decades of U.S. influence in trying to pick winners and losers in these countries or continuing to play the absurd geopolitical game of backing one repressive theocracy, Saudi Arabia, against another, Iran, in proxy wars, the best thing for the Yemenis is for the Americans not to meddle or to try and pick one side against the other.”

American foreign policy in the Middle East, he said, can already be labeled a disaster, most especially for the people of the Middle East.

“The only beneficiaries of American policy in the Middle East have been extremist groups, which take advantage of the war, the cycles of violence and hate, to recruit and fulfill their message and propaganda, and American and Western arms companies that are seeing increased profits each year,” said Hoh, who has served with the U.S. Marine Corps in Iraq and on U.S. embassy teams in Afghanistan and Iraq.

When the two Yemens merged, most of the arms the unified country inherited came from Russia, which was a close military ally of South Yemen.

Yemen’s fighter planes and helicopters from the former Soviet Union – including MiG-29 jet fighters and Mi-24 attack helicopters – were later reinforced with U.S. and Western weapons systems, including Lockheed transport aircraft (transferred from Saudi Arabia), Bell helicopters, TOW anti-tank missiles and M-60 battle tanks.

Nicole Auger, a military analyst monitoring Middle East/Africa at Forecast International, a leader in defence market intelligence and industry forecasting, told IPS U.S. arms and military aid have been crucial to Yemen over the years, especially through the Defense Department’s 1206 “train and equip” fund.

Since 2006, she pointed out, Yemen has received a little over 400 million dollars in Section 1206 aid which has significantly supported the Yemeni Air Force (with acquisitions of transport and surveillance aircraft), its special operations units, its border control monitoring, and coast guard forces.

Meanwhile, U.S. military aid under both Foreign Military Financing (FMF) and the International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme has risen substantially, she added.

Also, Yemen is now being provided assistance under Non-Proliferation, Anti-Terrorism, De-mining, and Related programmes (NADR) and International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) programmes.

According to the U.S. Congressional Budget Justification – U.S. support for the military and security sector “will remain a priority in 2015 in order to advance peace and security in Yemen.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Sierra Leone and Liberia alone could have a total of more than 20,000 new cases of Ebola within six weeks and as many as 1.4 million by Jan. 20, 2015, if the virus continues spreading at its current rate. Credit: European Commission DG ECHO/CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Sep 26 2014 (IPS)

Despite mounting pledges of assistance, the continuing spread of the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa is outpacing regional and international efforts to stop it, according to world leaders and global health experts.

“We are not moving fast enough. We are not doing enough,” declared U.S. President Barack Obama at a special meeting on the Ebola crisis at the United Nations in New York Thursday. He warned that “hundreds of thousands” of people could be killed by the epidemic in the coming months unless the international community provided the necessary resources.

He was joined by World Bank President Jim Yong Kim who announced his institution would nearly double its financing to 400 million dollars to help the worst-affected countries – Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone – cope with the crisis.

“We can – we must – all move more swiftly to contain the spread of Ebola and help these countries and their people,” according to Kim, much of whose professional career has been devoted to improving health services for people around the world.

“Generous pledges of aid and unprecedented U.N. resolutions are very welcome. But they will mean little, unless they are translated into immediate action. The reality on the ground today is this: the promised surge has not yet delivered." -- Joanne Liu, international president of Doctors Without Borders (MSF)
“Too many lives have been lost already, and the fate of thousands of others depends upon a response that can contain and then stop this epidemic,” he said.

Indeed, concern about the spread of the epidemic has increased sharply here in recent days, particularly in light of projections released earlier this week by the Atlanta-based U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which has sent scores of experts to the region. It found that Sierra Leone and Liberia alone could have a total of more than 20,000 new cases of Ebola within six weeks and as many as 1.4 million by Jan. 20, 2015, if the virus continues spreading at its current rate.

Moreover, global health officials have revised upwards – from 55 percent to 70 percent – the mortality rate of those infected with the virus whose latest outbreak appears to have begun in a remote village in Guinea before spreading southwards into two nations that have only relatively recently begun to recover from devastating civil wars.

Officially, almost 3,000 people have died from the latest outbreak, which began last spring. But most experts believe the official figures are far too conservative, because many cases have not been reported to the authorities, especially in remote regions of the three affected countries.

“Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), which is overseeing the global effort to combat the virus’s spread.

In addition to the staggering human costs, the economic toll is also proving dire, if not catastrophic, as the fear of contagion and the resort by governments to a variety of quarantine measures have seriously disrupted normal transport, trade, and commerce.

In a study released last week, the World Bank found that inflation and prices of basic staples that had been contained during the last few months are now rising rapidly upwards in response to shortages, panic buying, and speculation.

The study, which did not factor in the latest CDC estimates, projected potential economic losses for all three countries in 2014 at 359 million dollars – or an average of about a three-percent decline in what their economic output would otherwise have been.

The impact for 2015 could reach more than 800 million dollars, with the Liberian economy likely to be hardest hit among the three, which were already among the world’s poorest nations.

“This is a humanitarian catastrophe, first and foremost,” Kim said Thursday. “But the economic ramifications are very broad and could be long lasting. Our assessment shows a much more severe economic impact on affected countries than was previously estimated.”

Moreover, security analysts have warned that the epidemic could also provoke political crises and upheaval in any or all of the affected countries, effectively unravelling years of efforts to stabilise the region.

In a statement released Tuesday, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) warned that the hardest hit countries already “face widespread chaos and, potentially, collapse,” in part due to the distrust between citizens and their governments, as shown by the sometimes violent resistance to often military-enforced quarantine and other official efforts to halt the virus’s spread. Food shortages could also provoke popular uprisings against local authorities.

“In all three countries, past civil conflicts fuelled by local and regional antagonisms could resurface,” according to the ICG statement which warned that the virus could also spread to Guinea-Bissau and Gambia, both of which, like the three core nations, lack health systems that can cope with the challenge.

Obama, who Friday will host 44 countries that have enlisted in his administration’s Global Health Security Agenda, himself echoed some of these concerns, stressing that containing Ebola “is as important a national security priority for my team as anything else that’s out there.”

Earlier this month, WHO estimated that it will cost a minimum of 600 million dollars – now generally considered too low a figure –to halt the disease’s spread of which somewhat more than 300 million dollars has materialised to date.

The U.S. has so far pledged more than 500 million dollars and 3,000 troops who are being deployed to the region, along with the CDC specialists. Even that contribution has been criticised as too little by some regional and health experts.

“…[T]he number of new Ebola cases each week far exceeds the number of hospital beds in Sierra Leone and Liberia,” according to John Campbell, a West Africa specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), who cited a recent article in the ‘New England Journal of Medicine’.

“It is hard to see how President Obama’s promise to send 3,000 military personnel to Liberia to build hospitals with a total of 1,700 beds can be transformative,” he wrote on the CFR website. “The assistance by the United Kingdom to Sierra Leone and France to Guinea is even smaller,” he noted.

A number of foundations have also pledged help. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has spent billions of dollars to improve health conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, has committed 50 million dollars, while Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s foundation has pledged 65 million dollars to the cause. The California-based William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced Thursday it had committed five million dollars to be channelled through half a dozen non-governmental organisations.

But whether such contributions will be sufficient remains doubtful, particularly given the dearth of trained staff and adequate facilities in the most-affected countries and the speed at which the pledged support is being delivered – a message that was underlined here Thursday by Joanne Liu, international president of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has been deeply engaged in the battle against Ebola.

“Generous pledges of aid and unprecedented U.N. resolutions are very welcome,” she said. “But they will mean little, unless they are translated into immediate action. The reality on the ground today is this: the promised surge has not yet delivered,” she added.

“Our 150-bed facility in Monrovia opens for just thirty minutes each morning. Only a few people are admitted – to fill beds made empty by those who died overnight,” she said. “The sick continue to be turned away, only to return home and spread the virus among loved ones and neighbours.”

“Don’t cut corners. Massive, direct action is the only way,” she declared.

Obama himself repeatedly stressed the urgency, comparing the challenge to “a marathon, but you have to run it like a sprint.”

“And that’s only possible if everybody chips in, if every nation and every organisation takes this seriously. Everybody here has to do more,” he said.

Pending legislation calling for U.S. President Barack Obama to impose sanctions against key Venezuelan officials is unlikely to defuse the ongoing crisis there and could prove counter-productive, according to both the administration and independent experts here.

A bill approved overwhelmingly Tuesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would authorise Obama to freeze any financial assets in U.S. institutions and cancel U.S. visas for Venezuelan officials deemed responsible for “directing significant acts of violence or serious human rights abuses against persons associated with the anti-government protests in Venezuela.”

The bill, a similar version of which was approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this month, would also authorise sanctions against anyone who has provided assistance to government security forces and commit 15 million dollars in support for “pro-democracy” groups and independent media in the South American nation.

“Today we took an important step forward to punish human rights abusers in (President) Nicolas Maduro’s regime,” declared Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who co-sponsored the bill with the Committee chair, Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez.

“The U.S. has tried hard not to become the centre of the debate, realising [...] that it would only help the Maduro government point to Washington as the source of the protests [...]." -- John Walsh, Venezuela specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)
“(N)ow that thousands of innocent Venezuelans have protested courageously and peacefully against the failure that is this chavista government, we can’t allow the government’s repression, violence and murders to go unpunished,” he said in a statement after the 13-2 vote.

On a visit to Mexico Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry noted Congressional support for sanctions and hinted that the administration may feel compelled to impose them.

“Our hope is that the leaders, that President Maduro and others, will make decisions that will make it unnecessary for them to be implemented. But all options remain on the table at this time, with the hopes that we can move the (dialogue) process forward,” he said.

A number of experts, as well as senior administration officials, however, warned that the legislation, however well-intended, could make matters worse in the deeply polarised oil-rich country.

“I think people are really frustrated about what’s happening in Venezuela,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based hemispheric think tank here.

“But the U.S. doesn’t have a lot of leverage, and, while sanctions make people feel good, I can’t imagine them accomplishing much except to give Maduro another reason to attack the United States.

“It also risks alienating Latin American governments,” which, with the Vatican and under the auspices of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), have taken the lead in trying to mediate Venezuela’s divisions through dialogue between Maduro and moderate opposition forces.

“I just can’t imagine any Latin American governments seeing this as a good idea or helpful under present circumstances,” he told IPS.

“The U.S. has tried hard not to become the centre of the debate, realising – correctly, in my opinion – that it would only help the Maduro government point to Washington as the source of the protests and distract attention from the genuine and legitimate grievances that have given rise to the protests,” added John Walsh, a Venezuela specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

“One of the tacks that has been available to (Maduro) to get out of the dialogue and major compromises that it might force him to take is the ability to reframe the protest movement and the opposition as people in thrall to or actually taking orders from the ‘Empire’ as part of an international conspiracy to de-stabilise the government and push Chavismo out of power.”

Indeed, this has been the position taken by the Obama administration throughout the most recent crisis, which began in late February with student demonstrators demanding that Maduro step down.

In hearings before the Foreign Relations Committee two weeks ago, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson stressed Washington’s support for the UNASUR-led initiative.

“This is not a U.S.-Venezuela issue; it is an internal Venezuelan issue,” she told the senators. “…We have strongly resisted attempts to be used as a distraction from Venezuela’s real problems.”

The Senate bill, which is considered almost certain to pass if Majority Leader Harry Reid permits it to go to the floor, comes after the government-opposition dialogue – in which the foreign ministers of Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador have acted as UNASUR’s representatives – broke down last week over, among other issues, opposition demands that all political prisoners be freed.

In a report entitled ‘Venezuela: Tipping Point’ and released Wednesday, the International Crisis Group (ICG) warned that failure to resolve the stand-off could plunge the country into yet more violence, “leaving it unable to address soaring criminality and economic decline and exposing the inability of regional inter-governmental bodies to manage the continent’s conflicts.”

Since February, at least 42 people have died in confrontations between security forces and pro-government gangs known as “colectivos” and opposition forces.

While some opposition sectors have reportedly used violence, independent human rights groups have blamed most of the casualties on the government and its allies. In a harsh report issued earlier this month, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused security forces of severely beating and, in some cases, shooting at point-blank range, peaceful protesters, subjecting detainees to severe abuse sometimes amounting to torture, and, in some cases collaborating with the colectivos in their attacks on protestors and bystanders.

The increased repression, as well as the impasse in the dialogue, has intensified concern here about the likelihood of further polarisation that will strengthen hard-liners on both sides.

In its report, the ICG called for all sides to consider the appointment of an international facilitator, possibly from the U.N. system, to join the UNASUR-Vatican effort, as well as the deployment of a U.N. technical mission to support it.

While the administration opposes sanctions at this point, one senior State Department official said it hoped to intensify discussions with regional governments, beginning with Kerry’s visit to Mexico, about what more can be done to get the dialogue back on track.

“The real question is for them to sort of compare notes on what they’re hearing out of Venezuela, whether we think the efforts that UNASUR and the Vatican are making are working, and what more can we do from outside that process to either help it along or to be ready to do something more,” the official said.

“(T)he last thing we want to do is torpedo any dialogue that might lead to action, but we’re just as frustrated as the Senate is that nothing has happened yet.”

Kerry reflected that frustration Wednesday, accusing the government of a “total failure …to demonstrate good-faith actions to implement those things that they agreed to do approximately a month ago.”

“I think more high-level consultations with other governments about how they see the situation and to work with them could be helpful,” said IAD’s Shifter.

“But the critical country is Brazil, and, unfortunately, (U.S.) relations with Brazil aren’t good because of the Snowden affair that led to the postponement of (President Dilma) Rousseff’s state visit that was supposed to take place late last year.”

(END)

Churches in Diabaly, central Mali, were looted and destroyed during the Islamist occupation. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Bryant Harris
WASHINGTON, Jan 15 2014 (IPS)

A year after Mali’s civil war came to an end, experts here are increasingly concerned that the country risks an eventual return to violence, particularly as Malian authorities continue to marginalise the restive north while neglecting to pursue meaningful political and economic reforms. 

Indeed, a lack of equitable opportunity across Mali has caused northern Tuareg separatists to cite political and economic marginalisation as their reason for rebelling in the first place. The Tuaregs have contested Mali’s north since the 1990s, launching four separate rebellions, finally succeeding due to arms obtained from the Libyan Civil War against Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.“There have been promises made for increased development and local autonomy, but the Malian government strategy is simply to buy off the leader of the rebellion." -- J. Peter Pham

In 2012, Al Qaeda-linked groups took advantage of the insurgency and a military coup to establish control over the area, though Malian authorities were eventually able to expel the Islamist militants with the aid of French intervention. This led to a June 2013 ceasefire accord known as the Ouagadougou agreement, which allowed the government to station soldiers in the north and paved the way for democratic elections last summer.

Yet today, analysts suggest the Tauregs feel that the Malian government has not lived up to its past promises.

“The Tuaregs as a whole regret their temporary alliance with extremists who pushed them out right away but are by no means fully reconciled with the government in Bamako,” J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, told IPS.

“There have been promises made for increased development and local autonomy, but the Malian government strategy is simply to buy off the leader of the rebellion – but not address the underlying causes. People have to see some sort of benefit for being part of the state and that has not been the case.”

On Sunday, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacer Keita concluded a three-day trip to Mauritania, where he signed a joint statement increasing cooperation between Malian and Mauritanian security forces as France reduces its presence in Mali. Yet analysts from the International Crisis Group (ICG), a watchdog group, are warning that the country’s internal security remains fragile.

Further, a new ICG report cautions that “the urgent need to stabilise the [security] situation should not detract from implementing meaningful governance reforms and a truly inclusive dialogue on the future of the country.”

Similar sentiments recently came during an official mission to Mali by the International Monetary Fund.

“[G]rowth in Mali must be more equitable and more inclusive,” Christine Lagarde, the head of the Washington-based IMF, wrote in a blog entry last week. “This means that all sectors in Mali’s economy should have access to opportunity, including in the education sector and participate in the benefits of growth.”

Limited reconciliation

The Malian government’s inability to adequately include the north in the economic growth that Lagarde recently praised has hindered reconciliation attempts.

After the conflict, civil service workers staffing these institutions have been slow to return to the north, even as northern infrastructure is in need of rehabilitation.

The lack of public services and economic relief in northern Mali has reportedly made the Malian government even more unpopular, resulting in several protests. In late November, for instance, the Malian army opened fire at civilians attending a protest.

The ICG suggests that Malian authorities should focus on the reestablishment and improvement of judicial, health-care and education systems. The report also calls on the government to end its reliance on community-based armed groups to establish order and launch investigations into the army’s abuse and harassment of civilians.

The unrest has also hindered the shipment of humanitarian aid, while the country continues to lack the resources to restore services in the north. In October, the secretary-general reported that some 65 percent of health centres in conflict-affected areas are either partially functional or completely destroyed, while half of schools are closed.

Despite the government’s unpopularity in the north, a United Nations mission, known as MINUSMA, has worked to support Mali’s National Commission for Dialogue and National Reconciliation, established in March 2013 to foster improved relationships between the Malian government and northern separatists. But in an October report, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the “dialogue and reconciliation activities” as “limited”.

Mali has also established a series of conferences focusing on northern decentralisation to soothe unrest by giving Tuareg separatists more autonomy. However, the ICG’s new analysis warns that “the meetings should be more inclusive … and result in prompt, tangible actions,” such as the delayed transference of some state resources to local authorities.

Critics of the reconciliation talks note that they are top-down initiatives from Bamako, Mali’s southern capital, rather than community-led. As a result, armed groups in the north have refused to participate in the meetings on the grounds that the government is uninterested in actual dialogue.

Volatile security

As southern Mali attempts to reconcile with the north, the security situation overall remains tenuous, with significant transitions underway.

“Because of limited resources, budget complaints, and demand elsewhere, you’ll soon be left with barely 1,000 French troops,” the Atlantic Council’s Pham says.” Most of these will be engaged in the southern part [of Mali] and not the northern two-thirds, leaving an undersized and under-equipped, predominantly African, force roughly trying to hold a very large territory.”

Rinaldo Depagne, the ICG’s West Africa director, tells IPS that while the Malian government has not violated the terms of the June 2013 ceasefire, “there’s a kind of will from the government to opt out of the frame of the agreement.”

However, Depagne believes that there is cause to be hopeful. “While certain parts of the agreement are not yet respected, that doesn’t mean they won’t be in the near future. We don’t know if they are ready to fully accept the arrangement but it’s predictable that they could.”

The U.N. secretary-general, meanwhile, found that both parties had violated the ceasefire through the “uncoordinated movement of troops”. Consequently, Malian forces and northern militias continue to clash amidst “armed banditry, new jihadi attacks, and inter-communal violence,” the report notes.

Pham also questions how successful the French intervention was in removing jihadist militants from northern Mali.

“If one believes the numbers put out by French spokesmen or African spokesmen, about 600 militants have been killed in the last year and roughly a little over 400 have been taken prisoner,” he says. “This leaves you with more than 1,000 militants who are unaccounted for and are either biding their time hiding in communities they’re well-integrated into or up in the mountains.”

In the face of northern unrest, MINUSMA has played an active peacekeeping role since France’s offensive in the north. Depagne says that while there are 6,000 MINUSMA troops in Mali right now, “there should be more than 10,000.”

Depagne suggests U.N. forces could be at “full scale” in the coming months.

UNMISS officers provide water to civilians seeking refuge from fighting in Juba on Dec. 17, 2013. Credit: UN Photo/UNMISS

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 11 2014 (IPS)

As the death toll rises from South Sudan’s spiraling political and ethnic conflict, the ability of the U.N. to enforce its peacekeeping mandate in the country is coming under increased scrutiny.

On Thursday, U.N. under-secretary general for peacekeeping Hervé Ladsous told reporters the toll well exceeded 1,000 and reiterated that “the situation in terms of violations of human rights remains terribly critical.” The next day, the International Crisis Group released its own estimates that put the figure at up to 10,000."It's 11 million people across a country the size of France. How could we promise that we could protect everyone all of the time against everybody?” -- Kieran Dwyer of DPKO

Yet since the deaths of two Indian peacekeepers during a Dec. 19 attack by Nuer militia on an UNMISS base in Jonglei State, the U.N. has engaged militarily neither the loose coalition of rebel forces led by former vice-president Riek Machar nor government SPLA troops fighting for President Salva Kiir.

Vastly outnumbered by combatants, peacekeepers have been directed to protect UNMISS compounds where NGOs and the U.N.’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, have struggled to provide for upwards of 60,000 displaced South Sudanese who have sought shelter.

“We cannot protect those people from being overrun while at the same time doing patrolling in an area the size of France,” said Kieran Dwyer, chief of public affairs at the U.N.’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO).

As fighting raged and the government appeared to retake the northern city of Bentiu Friday, Mongolian peacekeepers there remained near the city’s compound, where 9,000 residents had taken refuge.

“It’s not our job to stand in the way of the anti-government forces fighting the pro-government forces,” Dwyer told IPS.

Dwyer says UNMISS utilises local channels to inform combatants of the location of civilians and threatens them with accountability should they attack, but he admits peacekeepers themselves are fearful of being overwhelmed and killed and even of reprisal attacks within UNMISS camps if they were to engage one side or the other in a firefight.

That state of affairs means little stands in the way of potential human rights violators, says Cameron Hudson, director of policy at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and former director for African Affairs at the National Security Council.

“You can’t do peacekeeping with the mentality that you accept zero casualties,” Hudson told IPS. “If that’s how you enter into these missions, they will never be fully successful and carry out their mission mandates.”

Fighting began on Dec. 15 when Nuer and Dinka factions of the SPLA skirmished in the capital. President Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, immediately ordered the arrest of 11 high-profile opposition leaders and accused Machar, a Nuer, of plotting a coup, a charge Macher has denied. Despite international scepticism of Kiir’s account, Machar fled Juba and took command of rebels.

The rebellion has displaced 400,000 people and pushed unknown numbers into the bush where they remain unreachable by humanitarian agencies and peacekeepers. The fate of those who fled their homes but didn’t make it to U.N. compounds lingers as a glaring question that neither the U.N. nor its critics appear capable of answering.

Human rights

The violence comes as the U.N. unveils “Rights Up Front,” its new genocide prevention initiative – an attempt to address failures to avoid civilian deaths in past conflicts in places like Bosnia, Rwanda and Sri Lanka.

Though it remains unclear how many civilians have perished in South Sudan, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay in December reported mass graves had been found in Juba and Bentiu and cited “extrajudicial killings” and “the targeting of individuals on the basis of their ethnicity.” Observers believe more will be uncovered.

“It is irrefutable, and needs repeating, that serious human rights violations are the best early warning of impending atrocities,” said Deputy Secrety-General Jan Eliasson, speaking before the General Assembly on “Rights Up Front.”

But in South Sudan, UNMISS has been tentative.

“They don’t have that many forces on the ground,” said EJ Hogendoorn, deputy programme director for Africa at the Crisis Group. “They also obviously have significant logistic challenges in terms of moving around safely.”

Still, in a Christmas Eve letter to the U.N. secretary general, Crisis Group President and CEO Louise Arbour wrote that the U.N. needed to do more to ensure the safety of civilians.

“We feel that UNMISS, using its existing forces until additional troops arrive, should take a number of immediate, specific steps to prioritise protection of civilians, above all other mandated tasks,” said Arbour.

“Clearly not enough is known about what’s going on,” Hogendoorn told IPS. “This is part and parcel of the fact that peacekeepers are not patrolling as much as they normally would.”

From its beginning in 2011, UNMISS was mandated to protect with force “civilians under imminent threat of physical violence.” But despite signs of political instability in the SPLM governing coalition and an uprising earlier in 2013 in Jonglei state, the mission remained unequipped to prevent or intervene in violence on the scale seen in the past month.

On Dec. 26, Hilde Johnson, the U.N. special representative to South Sudan, told reporters, “I don’t think any South Sudanese nor any of us observers in country or outside expected the unraveling of the stability so quickly.”

But others have said those investments meant the U.N., Johnson, and NGOs on the ground were more hesitant to criticise the government and highlight warning signs.

Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation, says UNMISS was unprepared from the start. After South Sudan declared independence in 2011, peacekeepers that had already been in the country to enforce the 2006 comprehensive peace agreement between the north and south were shifted into the new mission.

“It was the power of inertia,” de Waal told IPS. “There were contracts, jobs, infrastructure and the U.N. said, let’s maintain it.”

“There was no deep analysis – what will these troops actually be doing? So they are really there by default.”

But Dwyer says part of the problem is some observers’ inaccurate expectations of the mission.

UNMISS “was never set for a situation where you have almost a civil war,” said Dwyer. “The primary responsibility to protect civilians is the government’s and our job is to support the government.”

“The U.N. will intervene militarily against any armed group who threatens civilians if we are there and have the capacity to do so.”

The rationing of intervention isn’t a new strategy for U.N. missions. Though DPKO oversees the second-largest deployed army in the world, peacekeepers are spread thin among 15 missions and further divided among bases within countries.

“It’s [South Sudan] 11 million people across a country the size of France,” said Dwyer. “How could we promise that we could protect everyone all of the time against everybody?”

Last month, the Security Council voted to increase troop levels in South Sudan from 7,000 to 12,500, but a lengthy approval process has slowed their deployment. Ladsous, who previously told reporters the 5,500 new troops would arrive by the middle of January, now says they may not all be in the country until March.

Meanwhile, as the conflict threatens to morph into a wider civil or regional war, information on deaths and human rights violations has become increasingly obscured by the fog of war.

Adding to the dilemma facing peacekeepers is the presence of Ugandan troops fighting for the government. Ugandan President Yuweri Museveni is a strong ally of Kiir, but Uganda is also one of the countries mediating at U.N.-endorsed negotiations taking place in Addis Ababa.

Observers say the talks in Ethiopia are unlikely to achieve a ceasefire until one side has gained a significant military advantage.

All of this only makes a show of force more important, says Hudson.

“There’s no question they could be doing more,” he said. “The humanitarian part of the mission appears willing to accept a much higher risk than the actual armed peacekeepers. That’s not how it’s supposed to be, that’s a fundamental flaw in the system.”

But Dwyer says that at a certain point, little can be done “if two people are really intent on their destruction.”

“The leaders of South Sudan, on both sides, bear responsibility for this conflict and for ending the fighting,” he said.

Rebel in northern Central African Republic. Credit: hdptcar/cc by 2.0

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 26 2013 (IPS)

France has said it will circulate a Security Council draft resolution Monday night that would create a U.N. peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic, as violence in its former colony threatens to morph into an ethnic conflict.

Earlier in the day, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who last week said conditions in the country “verged on genocide,” announced France would triple its troop presence there to 1200, bolstering 2,500 regional African troops who have been largely helpless to stem increasingly anarchic conditions.“Attacks like these on populated areas are causing massive devastation and fear among the population of the Central African Republic." -- Daniel Bekele

“There are no more state security services in Bangui or the rest of the country,” said Thierry Vircoulon, Central Africa project director at the International Crisis Group. “People are left to themselves – only churches can offer anything.”

Since fighting began nearly two years ago, 400,000 people have been internally displaced.

In March, Seleka, a loose-knit coalition of rebel groups from the country’s Muslim north, captured the capital, Bangui, and forced the president, François Bozizé, who rebels accused of failing to abide by previous peace agreements, to flee the country.

The rebel’s leader Michel Djotodia was appointed interim president, becoming the first Muslim to hold the office.

But Djotodia’s announcement in September that Seleka would be disbanded set off prolonged bouts of looting and violence committed by disgruntled rebels.

Amnesty International reports that since Bozizé’s overthrow, the number of militants identifying as Seleka has actually increased from 5,000 to 20,000.

And Human Rights Watch Monday accused a Seleka commander of explicitly killing civilians in a Nov. 10 attack in Camp Bangui.

“Attacks like these on populated areas are causing massive devastation and fear among the population of the Central African Republic,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

Last week, the United States pledged 40 million dollars to prop up the regional force that has been holed up in Bangui for months.

Though the International Support Mission to the Central African Republic (MISCA) has plans to increase its numbers from 2,500 to 3,600, leaders in the region are convinced little can be done without the authorisation of a U.N. peacekeeping operation.

Recent reports of attacks on mosques and churches are stirring echoes of times when the U.N. has been slow to prevent genocide.

Following an internal report highlighting the U.N.’s inaction during the final months of civil war in Sri Lanka, the U.N.’s response in the Central African Republic will be seen as a test of promises to act earlier and more decisively to prevent genocide.

Muslims, who dominate Seleka, make up only 15 percent of the Central African Republic.

The conflict comes after “years of marginalisation and discrimination of Muslims in the northwest” of the country, said U.N. Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson.

Reports claim that elements of Seleka do not speak Sango, indicating they may have come from neighbouring countries such as Sudan or Chad.

In many parts of the country, members of the Christian majority have responded to the violence by creating their own militias, known as “anti-balaka”, or anti-machetes.

“There were several clashes between Seleka and the population this week,” Vircoulon told IPS. “The African peacekeepers retreated, they cannot prevent them.”

Though the country has a long history of coups and rebellions, religion has not reared its head to such a degree – as it has in the rest of the Sahel – until now.

“This did not start as a religious conflict,” said Philippe Bolopion, United Nations director at Human Rights Watch. “Neither party had a religious agenda.”

As fighting picks up, younger and younger Central Africans are being pulled into the ranks on both sides. UNICEF estimates there are currently 6,000 child soldiers fighting in the country.

Speaking to the Security Council, Eliasson called the suffering “beyond imaginable” and said the U.N. had to act in order to “prevent atrocities.”

But very little information makes its way out of the country, where NGOs are thin on the ground.

Thousands of refugees have fled from major cities into the bush where they are susceptible to malaria and are dying from treatable diarrhea.

Until semblance of order is restored, those who have fled are expected to die in increasing numbers.

“Part of the problem is we don’t know anything,” Bolopion told IPS.

Last week, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he supported a U.N. peacekeeping force of 6,000 troops. But French representative Gérard Araud told reporters the secretary-general’s office would require up to three months to compile a plan of action, pushing into March.

That timeframe leaves many wondering what role France will play in the interim, less than a year after it launched a military operation in Mali to dislodge extremists who had created a de-facto state in the north of the country.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (far left) sitting next to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 27. Credit: European External Action Service/cc by 2.0

By Jasmin Ramsey
GENEVA, Oct 13 2013 (IPS)

Almost exactly four months after the election of Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, talks over the Islamic Republic’s controversial nuclear programme will resume here on Tuesday.

Negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) were last held in April in Almaty, Kazakhstan, when the Iranian team was headed by former presidential candidate Saeed Jalili, a hardliner who was defeated by the moderate cleric in Iran’s June election.“No one should expect a decade-old impasse to be resolved in just two days." -- Ali Vaez of ICG

The closest Iran came to reaching a nuclear deal under Jalili’s watch was in October 2009 when his direct meeting with then under-secretary of state William Burns resulted in a tentative agreement that included transferring most of Iran’s low-enriched uranium to Russia to be processed into fuel rods for medical purposes.

But hopes were dashed when “Iran’s tumultuous post-election environment, combined with a lack of transparency regarding the agreement’s details, led to opposition across the political spectrum,” Farideh Farhi, an independent scholar at the University of Hawaii, told IPS.

“Eventually the inability of both Jalili and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to convince others in Iran that the agreement included an explicit acceptance of Iran’s enrichment programme led to Leader Ali Khamenei’s withdrawal of support for the agreement,” she said.

Iran’s new team

Rouhani, a former nuclear negotiating chief (2003-05) who has promised “moderation” and “constructive interaction with the world,” has raised hopes among Iranians that his administration will secure a deal that will include relief from the many rounds of sanctions Iran is currently enduring.

His trip with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to New York last month resulted in Iran’s highest-level formal direct meeting with a U.S. official since its 1979 revolution.

Zarif was “optimistic” after meeting with the P5+1 and a private 30-minute discussion with Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 27.

“Now we have to match our words with action. And that’s, I hope, not a challenge,” the Western-educated diplomat said at the end of a talk by Rouhani.

The meeting was followed by a brief but cordial phone call between President Barack Obama and Rouhani that suggested a thaw in the icy relations of the two countries.

While Obama’s announcement that Kerry would be directly involved in negotiations with Iran was received positively by diplomacy advocates, the secretary of state is not expected to attend the Geneva talks, where the U.S. lead representative will continue to be Wendy Sherman, the under secretary for political affairs.

That the U.S. side will now include Adam Szubin, the director of the Treasury agency that administers and enforces sanctions (OFAC), also indicates the U.S. is evaluating its sanctions policy.

Zarif will only reportedly attend an introductory session of the two-day talks (Oct. 15-16) that will include EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton. The Iranian side will then be led by Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, according to Iranian press reports.

“I am reassured by the possibility that the Iranian side will be led by Minister Zarif, because he is a brilliant diplomat, and by the hints that the purpose of the meeting is for Iran to present ideas and for the others to get clarification and report back to Principals,” Peter Jenkins, who served as the UK’s permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (2001-06), told IPS.

“But problems could arise if either side sought to move too far too fast, meaning that they demanded commitments from the other side without volunteering commitments of their own,” he said.

Leaks and speculation

“We will present our views, as agreed, in Geneva, not before. No Rush, No Speculations Please (of course if you can help it!!!),” tweeted Zarif from his official account on Oct. 11.

Two days earlier, former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani seemed to suggest that Iran was willing to talk about its stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium.

“We have some surplus, you know, the amount that we don’t need. But over that we can have some discussions,” Larijani, currently Iran’s Parliament Speaker, told the Associated Press on the sidelines of an Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in Geneva.

The Iranian parliament’s news website later described those comments as “contrary to reality and baseless,” according to a translation by Al-Monitor.

The Wall Street Journal meanwhile reported on Oct. 9 that Iran has been preparing a proposal that’s very similar to the P5+1’s Almaty proposal.

The P5+1’s last confidence-building offer, which Iran did not formally respond to, included demands that Iran suspend 20-percent enrichment, ship some of its existing uranium stockpiles abroad and temporarily shutter its Fordow enrichment facility in return for relief from U.S. and EU sanctions on precious metals and petrochemicals and on sanctions targeting Iran’s airline industry.

On Sunday, the Iranian Student News Agency reported that Iran would be presenting a three-phased proposal that includes enrichment inside Iran.

Later that day, negotiator Araqchi was quoted saying “Of course we will negotiate regarding the form, amount, and various levels of [uranium] enrichment, but the shipping of materials out of the country is our red line,” according to Reuters.

Experts, however, urge caution on these reports.

“Unsubstantiated leaks so far have only created inflated hopes that could be dangerous and lead to disappointment,” Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group, told IPS.

“No one should expect a decade-old impasse to be resolved in just two days…At best, the two sides could narrow their differences on the broad contours of an end game and a road map for getting there,” he said.

Restricted timeframe 

Rouhani stressed in New York last month that he hopes a deal can be reached within three to six months. After that point hardliners could regain the upper hand domestically if Rouhani’s foreign policy has not resulted in any wins for Iran.

Meanwhile Congress is preparing to push forward more sanctions legislation.

The Senate Banking Committee agreed to delay the evaluation of a sanctions bill passed in July that further targets Iran’s oil exports after pressure from Kerry, but will proceed in the coming weeks, according to the New York Times.

When asked how increased sanctions would affect the diplomatic process, Farhi said “it depends on whether some sort of agreement is reached in Geneva or not.”

“With no agreement, the imposition of sanctions will be the public announcement of failure of talks. If there is an agreement and the U.S. Congress still insists on ratcheting up sanctions, then it is yet another announcement of Obama’s political weakness,” the Iran expert told IPS.

“I hope that all parties have enough foresight to know that, given the publicly expressed desire to resolve the issue, this is the time for flexibility and a step by step process of mutual trust building for the sake of avoiding a path that neither side desires,” said Farhi.

Even with potential U.S. strikes against Iranian ally Syria looming, Washington and Tehran appear to be preparing for the resumption of nuclear talks.

U.S. foreign policy analysts have been bustling since the Aug. 4 inauguration of Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, who may have ushered in a new era of Iranian diplomacy and international relations. “Syria has become Iran's Vietnam, and [Bashar al-] Assad's extensive use of chemical weapons, in equal parts amoral and stupid, had magnified Tehran's quandary.” -- Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies

“As the architect of the sole nuclear agreement between Iran and the West  – a not inconsiderable achievement given the depth of mistrust –  Rouhani presents a real chance for making progress in nuclear talks,” Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group, told IPS.

“Under [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, although the two sides were sitting at the same table, one side played chess, the other checkers. Under Rouhani, they are more likely to play the same game, albeit according to different rules,” he said.

“To succeed, the two sides need to do what they never truly did during the past few years: bargain,” added Vaez.

Iran’s announcement on Thursday that its nuclear negotiating file would be moved from its Supreme National Security Council to its Foreign Ministry, which is headed by Mohammad Javad Zarif, has also received a cautious nod from the White House.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Thursday that the United States was aware of the reports.

“The inauguration of President Rouhani presents an opportunity for Iran to act quickly to resolve the international community’s deep concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme,” she added.

The implication that the Western-educated Zarif will be overseeing Iran’s nuclear dossier may boost an apparent growing conviction here that Rouhani, who in August appointed Zarif to the FM, is someone whom Washington can work with.

Zarif made powerful acquaintances, including with then-senators Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel, during his tenure as Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations (2002-2007), although his contacts with U.S. diplomats date back all the way to the 1980s when he helped negotiate the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon.

“Zarif…is one of the smartest, funniest people I’ve ever met in professional life…and I don’t think he believes it’s in Iran’s best interest to have a nuclear weapon personally,” said nuclear policy expert George Perkovich, at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace briefing Thursday.

But Perkovich cautioned that Zarif is also a “formidable” negotiator who “unlike some of their predecessors” is neither “dumb” nor “ideological”.

“And so…we’re going to have to be sharp and on our game because if you’re trying to do stuff that’s just patently unfair and unbalanced, they’re just going to be able to slap us around the head rhetorically,” he added.

While no official date has been set, negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 group could resume as early as this month, though it remains to be seen how U.S. military action against Syria might affect them.

For Vaez, “A limited U.S. strike on Syria is more likely to delay than derail nuclear talks with Iran.”

He also told IPS that that Rouhani has put aiding Iran’s ailing economy and ending its isolation at the top of his agenda and will not let Syria “spoil” his plan.

“Losing both Syria and an opportunity for sanctions relief will constitute a double blow to Iran’s strategic interests and its new president’s agenda,” said Vaez.

While Rouhani has not personally, unlike hardliners in Iran, cast blame on Syria’s rebels for the alleged chemical attack, he has stated that the issue should be handled by the U.N. and warned against foreign military action.

“Iran, as it has stated before, considers any action against Syria not only harmful to the region but also to U.S. allies and believes that such a measure will not benefit anyone,” said Rouhani at the 14th Summit of the Assembly of Experts on Wednesday.

The careful line that Iran is walking on Syria, considered a long-time partner in Iran’s resistance bloc toward Israel, could result in an Iranian shift away from its ally as it pursues its greater interests.

“Syria has become Iran’s Vietnam, and [Bashar al-] Assad’s extensive use of chemical weapons, in equal parts amoral and stupid, had magnified Tehran’s quandary,” Mark Fitzpatrick, a non-proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), told IPS.

“With the leadership divided over how to respond, the hardliners are doubling down on their unqualified support for Assad, while Rouhani and other pragmatists are distancing themselves. Those divisions mean Iran will not respond militarily to a limited U.S.-led attack, though the flow of Iranian military arms may intensify, if enough Syrian airfields survive the tomahawk strikes,” he said.

“However difficult the mess Obama has on his hands over Syria, it’s nothing compared to the trouble Rouhani has been presented by his ‘ally’ in Damascus,” said Fitzpatrick.

Fitzpatrick added that while it’s not clear how such a move would play out, “Any real solution to the Syrian mess will have to involve the key outside players, including Iran.”

For now, Rouhani and Zarif at least appear to be holding true to what Rouhani said would be Iran’s policy of “constructive interaction with the world” during his first presidential press conference.

Rouhani’s eyebrow-raising Rosh Hashanah greeting on Twitter Wednesday was followed by a similar one by Zarif (his second official Tweet) who proceeded to tell U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s daughter that she shouldn’t confuse his government with that of his predecessor.

“Iran never denied [the Holocaust],” Tweeted Zarif in response to a request by Christine Pelosi to “end Iran’s Holocaust denial”.

“The man who was perceived to be denying it is now gone. Happy New Year,” replied Zarif.

But the potential of additional sanctions on Iran pushed through by Congress during this critical time and the persistent negative effects of decades of mutual mistrust between Iran and the U.S. will temper hopes for a quick resolution to the nuclear issue regardless of what happens in Syria.

U.S. and Israeli fears that Iran could achieve the capability to dash toward a nuclear weapon by as early as 2014 according to worst-case assessments also increases urgency here.

To date, the U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Iran has not made the decision to pursue nuclear weapons.

“The issue then is not whether Iran will make the decision in 2014 to dash for nuclear weapons. We don’t know whether they will or whether they want to and probably the probability is that they won’t, but they might,” Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s top Middle East advisor during Obama’s first term, told IPS at the Carnegie briefing.

“The issue is more, from a U.S. perspective, that this becomes the last moment that the intelligence community can come to the president and say, boss, we’ll know when they move to nuclear weapons,” he said.

“If we lose the ability to detect [Iran’s dash toward a weapon], the ability to prevent nuclear weapons goes down dramatically and the military option then slips off the table… if I’m right…whatever your assessment is, and say that’s the amount of time we have for a diplomatic deal, that means you have 12-18 months. So let’s get on with it,” Kahl told IPS.

The United States, which is preparing to launch a military strike on Syria, is being cautioned by several former world leaders and Nobel Peace laureates to seek a political solution to the ongoing crisis – and forego armed intervention in the beleaguered Middle Eastern nation.

Former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan argues that there is “no military solution” to the crisis in Syria. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who described the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as “illegal” and a violation of the U.N. charter, unequivocally declared Wednesday there is no military solution to the crisis in Syria.

Six Nobel Peace laureates, speaking on behalf of the Nobel Women’s Initiative (NWI), called upon the United States and its allies to use the international legal system, primarily the International Criminal Court (ICC), to respond to the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

At the same time, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) said if the United States goes ahead with the military attack, it will have taken such action for reasons largely divorced from the interests of the Syrian people.

“The administration has cited the need to punish, deter and prevent use of chemical weapons – a defensible goal, though Syrians have suffered from far deadlier mass atrocities during the course of the conflict without this prompting much collective action in their defence,” said ICG.

Even as the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has decided to bypass the Security Council, Annan said the 15-member U.N. body has “a moral responsibility to find common ground, putting the well-being of the Syrian people at the forefront of its decisions.”

This is the only way, he said, to end the violence and achieve a peaceful settlement based on an inclusive political process.

But the Security Council remains deadlocked, with Russia and China threatening to veto any resolution endorsing military action against Syria.

Speaking on behalf of the 11-member group called ‘The Elders’, Annan said: “We urge all member states to await the report of the U.N. inspectors on the use of chemical weapons in Syria and the deliberations of the Security Council before drawing conclusions and deciding on the course of action.”

The Elders, founded in 2007 by former South African President Nelson Mandela and currently chaired by Annan, is a group that includes former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, former Irish President Mary Robinson and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo.

In a statement released Wednesday, Annan said the Elders are appalled by the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Syria.

“We strongly condemn the use of such weapons as inhumane and criminal. Those responsible must be held accountable both individually and collectively,” the statement read.

The group says U.N. inspectors should determine the facts and the United States should await their report to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. There is no timeline for the release of the report, which focuses primarily on the chemical arms attack in Syria on Aug. 21.

The United States says it has evidence to prove that Syrian security forces were responsible for the attack but President Bashar al-Assad has accused rebel forces of using weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

The Syrian conflict has raged for two and a half years with over 100,000 people killed, many thousands injured, two million refugees and over four million people internally displaced within Syria.

“There is no military solution to this conflict. Therefore every effort must be made to stop further bloodshed and to re-energise the political process to put an end to the conflict that has devastated and brutalised Syria,” Annan said.

The Nobel laureates, including Jody Williams (U.S.), Shirin Ebadi (Iran), Tawakkol Karman (Yemen), Mairead Maguire (Ireland), Leymah Gbowee (Liberia) and Rigoberta Menchu Tum (Guatemala), are asking the U.N. Security Council to refer the case of the chemical weapons attack to the ICC.

“We hope that U.S. legislators, like their British counterparts, will recognize that there is no public appetite to resolve this problem through more bombs and more violence,” said Jody Williams, who won the Nobel Peace prize in 1997 for her work against the use of anti-personnel landmines.

“Americans know that any intervention, far from being a strategic move, will only lead to more loss of lives and even possibly to retaliation against Americans,” she added.

Last week, British Prime Minister David Cameron lost a vote – on military intervention in Syria – in the House of Commons.

The laureates say the use of chemical weapons is a “war crime that should be addressed by the international legal system created precisely for such events”.

They are urging the international community to convene the Syria Peace Conference, known as Geneva II, as one of the many nonviolent measures available to the international community help resolve Syria’s conflict and to include women in the peace process.

Hassan Rouhani. Credit: Official portrait, rouhani.ir

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Jul 23 2013 (IPS)

The successful campaign of Iran’s President-elect Hassan Rouhani may have been built on the persistence of hope among Iranian voters for a better future.

It remains to be seen how effectively the moderate cleric will manage expectations among Iran’s key political factions while fulfilling his campaign promises."Rouhani has an opening, but actual changes in Iranian policy historically have required consensus among several segments of the political elite." -- Kevan Harris of Princeton University

It’s the economy

Rouhani’s main domestic challenges are related to the economy, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, a Virginia Tech professor, told IPS.

“More specifically, first, to bring down inflation and restore macroeconomic stability given the commitments made by the [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad administration in the current budget,” he said.

“Second, to make progress on the sanctions front to encourage investment to create jobs, and third, to spread the benefits of economic growth evenly, among the poor who voted for him at least as strongly as the middle class,” said the Brookings non-resident senior fellow who was in Iran this June.

“Rouhani’s challenge is to bring tangible improvements in the next year or two, before the patience of those who voted for him runs out, so he can demonstrate that a moderate government who is willing to engage with the outside world can better deliver on prosperity than the populist isolationists,” Salehi-Isfahani said.

A successful overhaul of Iran’s economy will rely heavily on negotiations with key world powers over its controversial nuclear programme.

“With Dr. Rouhani there is real opportunity for gaining some positive momentum for at least trying to deescalate the nuclear crisis,” said Ali Vaez, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, at a Wilson Center event here on Jul. 22.

Vaez was less optimistic about prospects for Iran achieving the substantial sanctions relief it needs to battle its economic troubles.

“The sanctions currently in place on the regime are an intricately woven spiderweb… [that is] extremely difficult to untangle,” he said.

Shifting alliances

Rouhani’s unexpected victory would not have been possible without pivotal backing by reformist and centrist leaders.

“The implosion of the conservatives in the June election will likely lead to a reshuffling of elite alliances in Iran,” Kevan Harris, a Princeton sociologist, told IPS.

“If Rouhani’s win results in a new coalition of centre-right and centre-left politicians and their social bases, then we could see shifts in both foreign and domestic policy,” said Harris, who was in Iran during its election.

Nicknamed the “diplomatic sheik” during his service as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator from 2003-2005, Rouhani has promised to reroute the country from the path it was put on during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“Our main policy will be to have constructive interaction with the world,” said Rouhani during his first press conference as president-elect on Jun. 17.

While Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Sunday that the U.S. is “not honest in their dealings” and he was “not optimistic” about bilateral talks with Washington, he did not rule them out.

“We’ve always believed and continue to believe in interaction with the world but the important point is to understand the other party and determine its goals and tactics, because we will be tripped up if we don’t understand them correctly,” Khamenei said in comments posted on his website late Sunday.

Washington experts are meanwhile urging a cautious approach toward Iran’s new administration.

“This distrust of Iranian moderates has very deep roots [in Washington]…It won’t be overcome easily and it’s not inherently contradictory for an administration that does in fact seek to use diplomacy to have a certain degree of scepticism,” said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution, at Monday’s Wilson Center event.

“Those who are expecting this sort of big sanctions relief are creating expectations, particularly among the Iranian people, who are only going to be disappointed when and if we don’t see them on Aug. 4 [Rouhani’s inauguration] as some dramatic gesture from Washington,” said the former State Department policy advisor.

What lies ahead

While Washington’s response to Rouhani’s election victory was lukewarm at best, advocates of engagement with Iran received a boost last week.

That was reflected by the fact that 131 members of the hawkish Republican-led House of Representatives – including a majority of House Democrats – signed a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to “reinvigorat(e) U.S. efforts to secure a negotiated nuclear agreement”.

Rouhani tweeted his approval: “131 Congressmen have signed a letter calling on President #Obama to give peace a chance with Iran’s new president #Rouhani.”

Twenty-nine former government officials and national security experts also sent a letter last week to President Obama urging him to “seize the moment to pursue new multilateral and bilateral negotiations with Iran”.

If nothing else, Rouhani’s surprise election, which resulted from clever maneuvering by his prominent endorsers, proved that Iranian politics are unpredictable.

“As the third televised debate for the Iranian election revealed, nuclear policy over the past 10 years has not been based in a consistent and broad elite strategy in the Islamic Republic,” Harris told IPS.

“If it was all up to Leader Khamenei, then the embarrassments which spilled out between [Saeed] Jalili, [Ali Akbar] Velayati, and Rouhani on live television – and seen by about two-thirds of the country – would never have happened.

“I take that to mean Rouhani has an opening, but actual changes in Iranian policy historically have required consensus among several segments of the political elite, not radical attacks from the right or left,” he said.

“If Rouhani appoints a few conservatives in his negotiation team or his cabinet, this may be misconstrued in Washington as a sign of intransigence, when in reality this may actually be Rouhani’s way of keeping everyone on board so they cannot later veto his policy initiatives,” he said.

Harris told IPS that Obama also faces political challenges at home.

“Obama needs a foreign policy win after the messes in Syria and Egypt which took place under his watch, which showed how the U.S. is not the dominant actor in the region though it’s still an important one,” he said.

“If Obama’s advisors can make the point that Iranian influence is not the driving factor of every Middle East crisis that the U.S. suffers from, which is a true but not popular sentiment in Washington, then it would be easier to sell some sort of deal with Iran along with a reduction in sanctions to a domestic audience,” Harris said.

“But a cold shoulder by the U.S. in the guise of playing hardball is the path of least domestic resistance,” he added.

The transfer case carrying the remains of Master Corporal Byron Greff, 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, rests in the cargo hold of a C-130 on Bagram Air Field as a Canadian bag pipe player bows his head in prayer during a ramp ceremony Oct. 31, 2011. Greff was killed in an Oct. 29 Taliban attack; he served as a NATO Training Mission adviser and instructor. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Kat Lynn Justen

By Paul Weinberg
TORONTO, Jul 22 2013 (IPS)

NATO member countries like Canada will continue to be asked to shoulder the burden of a military mission stuck in Afghanistan because of the continued vulnerability of the Kabul-based government.

Although Ottawa has announced that the approximately 900 Canadian soldiers training the trainers within the Afghan security forces will return home next year, most experts expect that this contribution to the NATO will continue past that date."The dilemma lies in how to balance between a strong desire to get out of Afghanistan and an equally deep fear… of suffering an obvious and humiliating defeat." – King's College Professor Anatol Lieven

The speculation is that starting in 2014, the U.S. will withdraw most of its troops but leave behind about 9,000 for training and other assistance for the Afghan forces, said Graeme Smith, a Canadian and a Kabul-based analyst for the International Crisis Group. A former Globe and Mail foreign correspondent, he is the author of a forthcoming book, “The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan”.

“Americans haven’t clarified their commitment so other NATO countries are waiting [before announcing their contribution.] There will be pressure for Canada to have something [available],” Smith told IPS.

History repeating?

In 2011, Canada formally withdrew its force of 2,500 soldiers from combat in Kandahar province after 10 years of contributing to the U.S.-led NATO mission, but it cannot quite shake off its connection to a Kabul government that most experts agree would not survive a complete withdrawal of Western forces.

Afghan security and police forces reportedly rely a great deal on U.S. and NATO forces, especially for air power and logical support.

What keeps the U.S. in Afghanistan is the nightmare of history repeating itself, said Professor Anatol Lieven at King’s College in London. He is referring to the 1975 fall of Saigon and the defeat of the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese army to the superior North Vietnamese army, following the withdrawal of hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers and leaving behind a decade of fighting a bloody and controversial war on the ground.

“The dilemma lies in how to balance between a strong desire to get out of Afghanistan and an equally deep fear, especially on the part of the U.S. military, of suffering an obvious and humiliating defeat through the rapid collapse of the Kabul regime,” said Lieven.

The U.S. is ambivalent about a continued commitment because of its own budget challenges and difficulties with a suspicious Kabul government that balked when President Barack Obama’s administration sought recently to start talks with the Taliban insurgents, said Mark Sedra, president of the Security Governance Group and a political scientist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.

Subsidising security

Also, as the February 2013 Government Accountability Office report, “Afghanistan – Key Oversight Issues” points out, the U.S. and NATO countries are not providing sufficient funds to maintain the Afghan security forces over the long haul.

Afghanistan does not generate sufficient tax revenues to pay and maintain its security forces which now number 350,000 troops, and so it relies on the U.S. to fork over more than four billion dollars in subsidies annually, Sedra said.

At the same time, he continued, that outlay of money is probably not sufficient to pay for that amount of protection required to safeguard the Kabul government and the Afghan population.

“The reality is that the current size of the Afghan security forces is completely unsustainable. So unless you see those subsidies continue to roll in for an indefinite period, there is a high probability of [a] breakdown or even the collapse of the Afghan security forces,” he told IPS.

Among the potential scenarios painted by Sedra is a takeover by the Taliban Islamist insurgents – who ruled the country before 9/11– or new conflicts among the former Northern Alliance warlords who joined together to support the coming to power of the current government of Hamid Karzai in late 2001.

The major challenge for the Afghan security forces is not their fighting ability or pay level for individual soldiers, but the weakness of the logistical support and civilian administration of the defence ministry, said David Perry, a defence analyst with the Ottawa-based Conference of Defense Associations Institute and who has followed the training provided by Canada. He warns that it will take a “generation” for these issues to be resolved.

“All of the institutional stuff that you need to run [a military], supply lines as well as headquarters, planning function, that kind of stuff, [the Afghans] haven’t gone outside of the so-called mentoring stage. They need units that do administration. The ministry of defence needs to be more administratively competent,” he told IPS.

Another concern is that the costs of maintaining the Afghan security forces means that other programmes like health and education, in which NATO countries like Canada have invested considerable sums, may be sacrificed, said Canadian opposition MP Matthew Kellway, who is a defence procurement expert for his party, the New Democrats.

“Many countries, including Canada, went in at least nominally with the view to build up civil society institutions and government institutions in Afghanistan – education and health, and all those other kinds of issues. There is a huge question of how does the Afghan state support eduation, health and etc. and maintain its security forces independently,” Kellway told IPS.

The Canadian government invested in the range of 13 to 18 billion dollars, of which nine billion dollars went towards combat and the rest in development assistance for Afghanistan, according to internal government estimates and the public budget office in Ottawa.

The new Silk Road

So what will keep the U.S. and NATO inside Afghanistan despite the challenges? Michael Skinner, a York University University researcher and PhD candidate, argues that geo-political strategic planners in Washington have since the 1990s wanted their country to take advantage of Afghanistan both as a source of mineral wealth (especially in copper and iron) and its geographical position in the heart of the Eurasian continent.

Dubbed “the new Silk Road”, the strategy envisions investing billions in infrastructure development for highways, railways, electric lines and fibre optic cables across Afghanistan.

Future applications, says Skinner, include “transmitting electricity from Central Asia to Pakistan and India; transporting oil and gas from Iran and the Caspian basin to China, Pakistan, and India; laying fiber-optic cables from India to Russia and from China to Europe; improving road and rail connectivity from India to Russia and from China to Europe.”

Seeing the potential between 2001 and 2011, the Asian Development Bank invested 17 billion dollars in 7,000 kilometres in road and rail links across Central Asia, with all but six routes passing through Afghanistan.

“From my analysis, the concern for keeping the government in place is a greater concern about protecting Western investors than it is about governance in Afghanistan,” said Skinner.

Ultimately though, it will not be enough to have the Afghan security forces protect power lines and railway tracks from Taliban attacks for the benefit of investors, including ironically Chinese and Indian companies which will benefit if NATO stays in the country.

Preferable, Skinner told IPS, is for the West to come to some kind of peace agreement with the Taliban.

The uncertainty surrounding the future U.S. role puts a lot of this planning in doubt, said Sedra. “There is always a tendency to find where oil and natural resources factor in. But I am not so sure if in this case it will be a factor that is going to be enough to keep the United States and other NATO states to continue to invest their blood and treasure in Afghanistan.”

Protests have been building against Morsi in Cairo since last summer. Credit: Gigi Ibrahim/cc by 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jul 4 2013 (IPS)

Wednesday’s coup d’etat against the elected government of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has placed the administration of President Barack Obama in an uncomfortable position on a number of fronts.

Most immediately, it will be pressed to decide whether Morsi’s ouster constituted the kind of military coup that requires a suspension of some 1.6 billion dollars in U.S. military and economic assistance under U.S. law – a matter that is already being hotly debated both within and outside the administration now.“I think it would be very naïve to assume that this announcement today would necessarily move Egypt back to a democratic trajectory." -- Stephen McInerney of the Project on Middle East Democracy

But U.S. officials are also very concerned about the possibility of a violent reaction to the coup by Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, which, despite its dramatic decline in public popularity during Morsi’s one-year rule, remains Egypt’s most well organised institution, besides the military. Independent analysts have even suggested that conflict of the kind that wracked Algeria during much of the 1990s cannot be ruled out.

On the home front, the administration is also concerned that it will add ammunition to hawkish Republicans who have argued that Obama’s handling of the “Arab Spring” has been an abject failure and that his alleged “coddling” of the Brotherhood and other Islamist parties that swept elections in the region has backfired to the detriment of U.S. security interests.

Even as the current crisis began to crest Monday when, in the wake of massive anti-government demonstrations Sunday, the military issued an ultimatum for Morsi to work out a power-sharing agreement with his political foes, Republicans were already on the attack.

“The Egyptian turmoil stems from the Morsi government’s predictable power grab, which the Obama administration has been far too accepting of,” House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Republican Ed Royce told the cable blog on foreignpolicy.com. “U.S. aid has failed to compel the Morsi government to undertake the political and economic reforms needed to avert this crisis.”

Hours after the military’s announcement that the Constitution had been suspended and Morsi replaced by an interim government to be headed by the head of the Constitutional Court, the White House issued a statement in Obama’s name stressing that Washington “does not support particular individuals or political parties, but we are committed to the democratic process and respect for the rule of law.”

“(W)e are deeply concerned by the decision of the Egyptian Armed Forces to remove President Morsy and suspend the Egyptian constitution,” the statement said. “I now call on the Egyptian military to move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process, and avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsy and his supporters.”

Under U.S. law, the president must suspend all military and most economic aid whenever a “duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.” In Egypt’s case, a not inconsiderable 1.3 billion dollars a year in military aid and another 300 million dollars in economic assistance could be at stake pending the installation of a new democratically elected government.

In his statement, Obama said he had directed the relevant U.S. agencies to review the legal implications on U.S. aid of Wednesday’s events.

But it may be difficult for the administration to avoid enforcing the ban. Indeed, the Honduran army followed precisely that scenario after ousting President Jose Manuel Zelaya in 2009, and, despite protests by Republicans and the Pentagon, the administration labelled it a coup and suspended aid.

Washington has much more at stake in Egypt, whose military leaders, with whom the U.S. wants to retain as much influence as possible, have already taken great pains to deny that their action amounted to a coup.

“I think it’s just better to say this was a government that lost its legitimacy in a failed (democratic) transition,” said Robert Springborg, an Egypt expert at the Naval Post-Graduate School.

But whether the military will do so remains a big question, particularly given its previous record, most recently during the failed 17-month rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) that took power after the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak.

The administration should “make it clear to (Egyptian Defence Minister Gen. Abdel Fattah al-) Sisi that Washington would not support the return of the military to politics under the guise of national security and stability. We’ve heard this song before,” said Emile Nakhleh, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Political Islam Strategic Analysis programme.

“I think it would be very naïve to assume that this announcement today would necessarily move Egypt back to a democratic trajectory,” said Stephen McInerney, the head of the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), which had been strongly critical of the administration’s failure to press Morsi earlier to compromise with his secular opposition or publicly criticise unilateral actions by the ousted president that curbed civil liberties or polarised the country.

“I think there’s reason to really fear a serious escalation of violence in the short term,” McInerney told IPS. “And there are real questions about the rights of Islamists who feel their opportunity to participate in the political process has been undemocratically taken away from them, and the inclusion of the Brotherhood in any future government is an enormously important question.”

His concerns were echoed by the International Crisis Group, which said in a release Wednesday, “The forceful removal of the nation’s first democratically-elected civilian president risks sending a message to Islamists that they have no place in the political order; sowing fears among them that they will suffer yet another blood crackdown; and thus potentially prompting violent, event desperate resistance by Morsi’s followers.”

Obama made much the same point. “The United States continues to believe firmly that the best foundation for lasting stability in Egypt is a democratic political order with participation from all sides and all political parties – secular and religious, civilian and military.

“…The voices of all those who have protested peacefully must be heard – including those who welcomed today’s developments, and those who have supported President Morsy,” his statement said.

Springborg also expressed concern that the reaction of the Brotherhood, many of whose headquarters around the country have been burned down by anti-government protestors in recent days, could be critical.

“The thing that can run this off the rails would be if the Brothers go for the Samson-wrecking option, (although) I don’t think they have that power or the will to do it, because they have too much to lose organisationally and financially,” he said.

In his view, the new leaders must deal with the economic crisis most urgently by appointing civilian technocrats to finalise a long-pending 4.6 billion dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). That, in turn, would spur Saudi Arabia to provide major financial support that it has withheld in part because of its traditional distrust of the Brotherhood.

“When the Saudis come forward, then everyone else will, too,” he said, offering some real momentum to an economy that has spiralled downward under both the SCAF and Morsi.

*The story moved on Jul. 4, 2013 incorrectly quoted Nathan Brown of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as saying: “(I)f it is clear that what the military has just done in Egypt has ended the career of an anti-democratic leader and the military is materially supporting democratising moves – including, importantly, the stepping aside of the military and genuine transfer of power to a legitimately elected civilian leadership by a certain date – then the United States should support those moves in the most concrete way possible by not interrupting aid.”

Those words were written by David Rothkopf in an article that appeared on the foreignpolicy.com website on Jul. 3, 2013, and were mistakenly attributed to Dr. Brown. IPS apologises for the mistake.

The eve of the much anticipated Sinhala and Tamil New Year, celebrated across the island of Sri Lanka in mid-April to mark the end of the harvest season, was marred by a series of attacks, reminding everyone that “peace” does not mean a lack of violence.

A new U.N. resolution on Sri Lanka suggests that international pressure on the government will not diminish any time soon. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

On Apr. 13, the printing presses of the Jaffna-based Tamil language ‘Uthayan’ newspaper came under attack, reportedly the 37^th time the paper or those attached to it have been targeted.

In 2006, unidentified gunmen killed two of the publication’s employees, and during the last stages of the civil war that unfolded here in early 2009, some of the staff members lived and worked from its premises, too scared to step out of doors.

About two weeks before this latest incident, an Uthayan distribution centre in the northern town of Kilinochchi was attacked. Critics say the newspaper, owned by an opposition Tamil parliamentarian, has been partial to Tamil separatists. The government has described the damage on the distribution centre as an “inside hatchet job”, claims rejected by the publisher.

Further south, a group of Buddhist extremists calling themselves the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) have been spearheading a campaign of hatred towards Muslims, inciting mobs to attack Muslim-owned shops and business establishments.

In the beginning of April tensions flared when police broke up a candlelight vigil in front of the main office of the BBS. Some of those who said they had simply come to spread a message of peace were either arrested or verbally assaulted by the police.

These incidents come barely a month after the passage of the second successive U.S.-sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka at the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva in mid-March.

The resolution calls on the Sri Lanka government “to conduct an independent and credible investigation into allegations of violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law” committed during its conclusive war with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009 — but stops short of specifying punitive action if the government fails to comply.

Rights groups and aid workers who witnessed the final battles here in 2009 say the fighting displaced over 200,000 people and killed at least 40,000, many of them civilians. The government maintains there were “no civilian casualties”.

“This year's resolution makes clearer than before the international community's deep concern about serious ongoing human rights violations and the need for a proper and independent investigation into allegations."
These unanswered questions threatened to divide the wounded country still further and elicited an international outcry. Finally, in May 2010, Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse appointed the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) to investigate the conduct of the armed forces during the war.

The Commission handed its final report to Rajapakse in November 2011. But in February this year, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said the government has been “selective” in responding to the recommendations put forth by the LLRC.

Now, again, the resolution from Geneva leaves the onus for action in the hands of a government that has time and again dismissed statements and warnings from the international community as an “infringement” on Sri Lankan sovereignty.

Another disappointment was that, despite initial talk of requesting permission for Pillay to be granted full access to probe allegations of on-going rights abuse on the island, the adopted resolution simply calls on the Sri Lankan government to carry out its own investigations that are up to “international standards”.

In what was seen as a major watering down of the text, all references to “unfettered” access for U.N. special rapporteurs were replaced in the final document with a request that the government “cooperate” with special mandate holders and respond to outstanding requests for visits. All eight U.N. special rapporteurs are currently awaiting invitations to visit the country.

Rights activists say it is unlikely that the situation in Sri Lanka will change overnight – it will take time for international pressure to have an impact and that, too, only if it is sustained.

U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka Michele J. Sison told a group of journalists on Apr. 8 that the U.S., as the main backer of the resolution, is keeping a close eye on the situation on the ground, warning that “more serious” measures could be on the cards if the Rajapakse government fails to act on international concerns.

“The United States remains particularly concerned about threats against, and attacks on, media outlets in Sri Lanka,” she said, in reference to the attack on the Uthayan premises in Jaffna.

“As we examine next steps, we will renew our consideration of all mechanisms available, both in the Human Rights Council and beyond,” Sison told the Foreign Correspondents’ Association, though she declined to elaborate on what those “mechanisms” would be.

Other experts and rights defenders have issued similar warnings of sterner action. Alan Keenan, Sri Lanka project director of the London-based International Crisis Group (ICG), told IPS, “Sri Lanka can ignore these concerns only at its long term peril. And if the government does continue to ignore these international concerns, I expect the pressure will grow.”

Ruki Fernando, of the Rights Now Collective, a national advocacy body, told IPS that the resolution should not be taken in isolation but evaluated as an indication of persistent international scrutiny of Sri Lanka.

“The resolution acknowledges and expresses concern about serious ongoing violations and calls for more action by the government, including involvement of minorities and civil society and credible and independent investigations into allegations of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law,” he said.

He added that some crucial demands that were included in the original draft of the resolution but later withdrawn – such as “unfettered” access for U.N. special mandate holders – could be included in future resolutions.

“This year’s resolution makes clearer than before the international community’s deep concern about serious ongoing human rights violations and the need for a proper and independent investigation into allegations,” according to Keenan.

The international community’s dedication to holding Sri Lanka accountable to global human rights standards will be reflected in the November meeting of heads of Commonwealth member states scheduled to be held here; already there have been calls for a boycott of the meeting, or a shifting of the location.

The UK, which included Sri Lanka as a country of concern in its latest Human Rights and Democracy Report, said that it would do all it can to “encourage Sri Lanka to demonstrate adherence to Commonwealth values of human rights, democracy and the rule of law, particularly ahead of… the meeting in November”.

(END)